With the cameras back on, the actress turned to Rocket, still continuing the ongoing bit in a wheelchair and dressing gown, and asked him “Charlie, how are you feeling after you’ve been shot?” While Rocket seemed unaware of what he just said, his castmates’ faces betrayed their shock and amusement. That night, during the last commercial break as the cast gathered on the show’s main stage Home Base, word came down from the control room that they were running a little short and to have Tilton improvise a little bit as she says her thank yous and good nights. (Hagman had originally been approached to host the episode and when he passed the show reached out to Tilton, another Dallas cast member.) Of course, given that the answer to that question which dominated pop culture the previous summer had been revealed three months earlier on a November 1980 episode of the show, America had pretty much moved on, leaving the whole “Who Shot Charles Rocket?” premise feeling already dated. Finally, for it’s eleventh episode with guest host Charlene Tilton, someone had the bright idea to do a running bit through the whole episode parodying the shooting of Larry Hagman’s popular JR Ewing character on the popular prime time soap opera Dallas the previous year. Reviews were bad and the ratings plummeted as the cast and writers struggled to bring the show to the air each week. As Gottfried would later comment “It was like if in the middle of Beatlemania, you said, ‘Okay, John, Paul, George and Ringo are leaving and we’ve got these four other schmucks you’ve never heard of and they’ll be the new Beatles.'” Gilbert Gottfried, Ann Risley, Denny Dillion, Gail Matthius, Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo – was under a lot of scrutiny. Understandably, the new cast – featuring Rocket. In response, NBC promoted associate producer Jean Doumanian to oversee the show, a move that prompted the remaining NOt Ready For Prime Time Players – John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd have left the previous season – to quit en masse.

After five years of it being the toast of the town, creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels decided he needed to take a year off from the show. The 1980-81 season of Saturday Night Live was a turbulent one for the show. But while he is probably the most famous of all the performers who said “fuck” live from New York on a Saturday night, Rocket wasn’t the first nor the last to say it. With that improvised line at the end of the Februepisode of Saturday Night Live, cast member Charles Rocket earned himself a rather infamous place in the show’s history with his utterance of the the dread F-bomb – fuck.

“Oh, man, this is the first time I’ve ever been shot… I’d like to know who the fuck did it.”

Charles rocket movie appearences